The Arrival is a graphic novel without words. It tells a story of how an immigrant travels to a new country and tries to understand his new culture and surroundings.
A graphic narrative can tell a story without words simply by juxtaposing pictures together. Our brain will make the relations themselves by how the images are sequenced and placed together. The Arrival demonstrates this well--there are no words throughout the comic, yet many people can understand what it means. Generally, it's because our brain uses the material and relates it to things we have experienced. That's why it's generally recommended to add human elements to our works so that people can relate to it. This is also why, despite the surreal analogies in the images for the new countries, the human characters allow us to recognize and identify with them in The Arrival. Our brain does the work of understanding while the artist does the work of sequencing.
To me, The Arrival was a deeply relatable story on a personal level. My family history is directly very similar to The Arrival. My father immigrated to Canada for school by himself soon after I was born. A year later, my mother followed him to Canada, leaving me in China with my grandparents. Finally, a year after my mom had gone to Canada, my grandmother took me aboard the plane to Canada and I reunited with my parents. During the scene in The Arrival where the main character reunited with his wife and daughter, I cried because I related so much to it.
A graphic narrative can tell a story without words simply by juxtaposing pictures together. Our brain will make the relations themselves by how the images are sequenced and placed together. The Arrival demonstrates this well--there are no words throughout the comic, yet many people can understand what it means. Generally, it's because our brain uses the material and relates it to things we have experienced. That's why it's generally recommended to add human elements to our works so that people can relate to it. This is also why, despite the surreal analogies in the images for the new countries, the human characters allow us to recognize and identify with them in The Arrival. Our brain does the work of understanding while the artist does the work of sequencing.
To me, The Arrival was a deeply relatable story on a personal level. My family history is directly very similar to The Arrival. My father immigrated to Canada for school by himself soon after I was born. A year later, my mother followed him to Canada, leaving me in China with my grandparents. Finally, a year after my mom had gone to Canada, my grandmother took me aboard the plane to Canada and I reunited with my parents. During the scene in The Arrival where the main character reunited with his wife and daughter, I cried because I related so much to it.
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